Thursday, February 1, 2018

Julia Donaldson at Crossword Bookstores this week

Crossword Bookstores, at its store in Kemps Corner, held a special eventon monday. It was a book- signing and a meet & greet session with the bestselling childrens' author, Julia Donaldson, in association with publisher Pan Macmillan.

The children kept lining up, to see the creator of the magical stories, that they so love.

For the uninitiated, Julia Donaldson is a prize-winning author. Even though she started her career as a singer-songwriter, writing mainly for children’s television, a song of hers ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’was made into her first book in 1993 after a publisher approached her. Since then, she has written some of the world's best loved children's books.

Welcoming her to Crossword Bookstores for the book-signing, Maulik Desai, Head Crossword bookstores said, “Crossword bookstores is the place where authors and book lovers meet. We are honoured to host a signing session for Julia Donaldson, whose character ‘The Gruffalo' is one of the world’s best-loved monsters. "

Julia has been honoured in the past as the seventh Children’s Laureate. Because of her background in music and drama, she focussed on ‘stories in performance’ during her two years in office(2011-2013) as Laureate.

The author was seen signing book copies which were available for sale, and interacting with the children. When asked about India & why children love her books so much, the much-loved author said, “ Our journey to India has been overwhelming. The people here have been kind." Also speaking about the journey as an author to India,she added," people have displayed a joy of reading books. The teachers also encourage the reading habit in children. The visit to Mumbai has been the busiest among all the cities. I have two shows lined up tomorrow. The shows which was held today in the morning was housefull. It's a pleasure interacting with these little book lovers".

It was a fun filled evening for the children with activities and delicacies, which included tattoo art, book character acts and impromptu quiz about the author & book titles. Questions relating to Julia Donaldson's book were asked to the children. The winners were gifted copies of Julia's book.

Julia was also seen dancing and performing with the little kiddos out there on the tunes of ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’, the famous song by Julia Donaldson and perform 'The Graffalo" with her husband and the the team members.

The highlight of the show was the Gruffalo mascot which came to India for the first time. Children and parents loved getting themselves clicked with the Gruffalo.